Cinema: The New Pictures: Feb. 11, 1935

The Good Fairy (Universal). The ambition to be what she calls "a good fairy" is aroused in Luisa Ginglebusher (Margaret Sullavan) by an astonishing sequence of events. On the day that she is released from a Budapest orphanage, a friendly waiter (Reginald Owen) promises to smuggle her into a ball. At the ball, she meets an amorous plutocrat (Frank Morgan) whose fluttery advances she stalls off only by saying she is married. When Herr Konrad promises to make her husband immediately and fantastically rich, Luisa realizes her golden opportunity. She seizes a telephone book, mumbles an incantation, shuts her eyes and places her finger on the name of Dr. Max Sporum (Herbert Marshall).

Overwhelmed by a stroke of good fortune which he regards as the reward of his own patience and integrity, Dr. Sporum's first impulse is to buy himself a patented pencil sharpener. His second is to fall in love with his benefactress, who begins to understand the perils of irresponsible benevolence. By the time Dr. Sporum has had his beard shaved off and presented Luisa Ginglebusher with a fox neckpiece, there is nothing much left in The Good Fairy except the scene in which Luisa explains to her three puzzled admirers what she has been up to, straightens out a tangled situation by marrying Dr. Sporum with Herr Konrad for best man.

If the cinema version of The Good Fairy lacks the sophistication which Author Ferenc Molnar wrote into his play from which it was derived, it is all the more amusing because of the omission. An example of Hollywood's newly discovered ability to scour without scratching, it emerges as a slight comedy which is no less wise for being less cynical and one which is performed with exactly the right blend of nervousness and imperturbability by all the members of its cast. Good shot: Herr Konrad giving his order for supper to Luisa's waiter, who thinks she has no business in a private dining room.

Hei Tiki (Alexander Markey) belongs to that class of films which theatre managers advertise with lobby displays of excelsior and old straw, to represent South Sea Island residences. The cast contains The Virgin Bride, Her Lover and Her Father, all performed by natives. There is a volcano in the background. The dialog is entirely unintelligible.

Every picture like Hei Tiki brings with it the hope that, in their painstaking investigation of Pacific nooks and crannies, cinema producers have at last discovered one island where the aborigines' routine is distinct from that pursued in all the other ocean fly specks. In the case of Hei Tiki, a widely exploited picture made on The Isle of Ghosts, New Zealand, by the one-time editor of Pearson's Magazine, these hopes seemed reasonable and it is therefore the more painful that they are not realized. In Hei Tiki, as usual, the chieftain's daughter takes up with a rival tribal chief's son. Her camera-conscious father shakes his battle-ax, the black warriors jump into their canoes and there is the customary stone and mud-pie fight around the village walls. "Hei Tiki" is the love charm which girls of the Maori tribe wear around their necks. Worst shot: a group of natives with their backs to the camera yammering around a pile of holy sticks.